Dear B’nai Shalom Members, Families, and Friends:

Shalom U’vracha!  Peace and blessings.  I hope and trust the summer is treating you all well and you are enjoying the warmth, the sun, and the blue skies.  Even when the temperatures move into uncomfortable temperatures, I hope you are all able to reach back to the December-January times and recall that we often INTENTIONALLY wait for just this season to get us through the cold, dreary, wintry days.  I don’t know that everyone would agree, but I would much more happily escape the scorching heat by entering my home or other air-conditioned building in summer far more readily and happily than scraping the ice and snow off my windshield while sliding and skidding on the slick, slippery pavement, trying to keep warm and keep from falling!  This is why G-d created air conditioning!

During these hot months, it is not unusual for many families to take to the road and fulfill their plans and daydreams for summer travel.  Planning and taking part in family trips is a mainstay for Americans and our lifestyles.  Traveling is clearly at its zenith at this time of the year.

We are reminded that throughout the entire Torah, while certainly not set exclusively in the summer months, our Patriarchs and the Children of Israel spent most of the time of their lives about which we know, traveling and moving from place to place.

As early as Adam and Eve, following the episode of their eating the forbidden fruit (nowhere in the Torah does it say or imply that it was an apple!), they are banished from the Garden of Eden and sent away.  Their oldest son, Cain, upon \being caught, addressed, and sentenced by G-d for the first recorded murder in the Torah, that of his brother, Abel, is sent away from his home to remain a wanderer for the rest of his life.  Clearly not traveling for pleasure, but on the road,
nonetheless.

Noah certainly travels in his renowned episode with a legion of his favorite animals on the Ark but his voyage takes him to the waters.  He is the first maritime captain in the history of people on the earth.

Ten generations later, Abraham, the first of our Patriarchs, is sent away from his land, his birthplace, and his father’s home to a land that G-d promised to show him.  Not only was Abraham on the road but he was doing it without a map of his destination, not even knowing what that destination was meant to be.

Isaac’s travels were limited by G-d to those within the borders of the Land of Israel (Canaan) in his lifetime but his son, Jacob, more than made up for Isaac’s less extensive wanderings.  Jacob traveled extensively in his life, first fleeing from his murderous brother Esau’s intentions to kill him, then decades later when Esau’s anger had subsided, he returned to his home.  And yet again, decades later, upon hearing of the miraculous reappearance of his son, Joseph, whom he thought dead years earlier, Jacob traveled down to Egypt to reunite with the son from whom he had been separated for years.

Joseph himself logs in quite a few kilometers, not all of them willingly, as he is sold into slavery, brought down to Egypt, and finally travels back to the land of his birth, though temporarily and with Pharaoh’s permission, to bury his father.

Moses, our greatest leader and prophet, other than the Children of Israel themselves, may have been the leader in a different category; that of being the most traveled individual in the entire Torah!  From his life-saving basket as a child, to his flight from Egypt to Midian to again save his life, his eventual return to Egypt, to the highlighted Exodus from Egypt, Moses’ personal pedometer was likely in constant and continual motion!

And certainly, the documented travels – not all of them happy – of our Jewish people as we moved from place to place, encampment to encampment following our release from bondage in Egypt to our circuitous, nomadic, drifting punishment of forty years wandering in the desert, made us a people forever on the go!

There is a point to all of these travels.  In each case, we moved from one location to the next to improve our lot in life, sometimes enduring hard times along the way, but always with G-d’s watchful eye on us.

In our lives today, with fervent faith in G-d and a strong base and foundation in our Torah way of life, we too look to the Almighty to keep his eye on us in all we do, all we say, all we accomplish, and everywhere we may travel.  It is only through G-d’s intervention, kindness, and mercy that we arrive at our destination and accomplish our goals, desires, and objectives.

With Torah blessings,
Rabbi Dr. Yaacov Dvorin